Anthony Scaramucci is still planning to sell his firm,
SkyBridge Capital, and that has his friends and colleagues
wondering what's next.

People close to him say he's still interested in
politics, and he told a reporter this week that he'll reemerge
after laying low for a while.

The former White House communications director is used
to being a misfit, on Wall Street and in DC.

NEW YORK CITY — There's something you need to know about Anthony
Scaramucci: He's humiliated himself epically before but doesn't
stay down.

Once upon a time, in the 1990s, he was fired from a job at
Goldman Sachs, with a severance payment, only to be hired back to
the elite investment bank within two months.

In 2010 he bought part of his business from Citigroup when the
bank was basically on its knees. He took that and turned it into
an annual "Davos in the desert," a must-attend Wall Street
hedge-fund party in Las Vegas.

You see, he's done this several times. The latest version of it
was a return to the Trump administration after he'd been cast off
and sent back to Wall Street with his head in his hands. That, of
course, ended in a spectacular and public flameout after just 10
days as White House communications director.

So it's only natural that people who know the man they call "The
Mooch" are wondering, and speculating about, what the next move
will look like.

I can tell you a few things. First, the sale of his firm,
SkyBridge Capital, looking to be priced at just under $200
million, is still happening. A person familiar with the deal says
that it now could be a matter of days away.

I can also tell you that, for now, people close to Scaramucci say
that he still sees a future for himself in politics, especially
now that he thinks President Trump owes him a favor for his
role in getting rid of former White House Chief of Staff Reince
Priebus. This is obviously a gamble, but it's completely in
character.

What follows is a story of a guy who made his way into the orbit
of Donald Trump to gain a seat of power — and what that effort
cost him before it imploded so quickly. In part it's a classic
tale: Scrappy working-class kid makes it into the ranks of the 1%
on Wall Street. But this kid, despite his financial success, is
still maligned by some of the same money men who see him as an
outsider who is more talk than substance.

You could say most of America has the same impression right
now.

The story below is based on conversations with Scaramucci in
months and years past, as well as with friends and colleagues as
recently as this week. The Mooch himself did not respond to
requests for comment for this story, though he did tell HuffPost
this week just that he would "reemerge."

Make it legend

Here's The Mooch's origin story in 30 seconds. He's so practiced
at telling it, he could probably give it to you in 20.

Anthony Scaramucci grew up on the North Shore of Long Island. His
father worked construction, and he was the first in his family to
attend an institution as venerable as Harvard Law School. As law
school was ending — The Mooch was class of 1989 — he considered
Wall Street. At that time the industry was white hot and still on
a 1980s "greed is good" high.

So Scaramucci interviewed at Goldman Sachs.

Anthony
Scaramucci.Thomson
Reuters

"I was wearing polyester everything," Scaramucci told me in 2012.
"Black polyester suit, a thin black Guido tie, a white-on-white
polyester shirt, if you know what that means, and narrow Capezio
cockroach-killer shoes. My interviewer took me aside and told me,
'You are the worst-dressed kid I've met at this school.' I was
mortified because I thought I looked fantastic!"

At the time he did not take his exams as seriously as he took his
outfit. Instead of studying for the bar, The Mooch spent the
summer waterskiing on Long Island.

Then there was the infamous Series 7 exam, a Wall Street
stockbroker test. For that one, The Mooch agreed to play "Series
7 Chicken." There was an $8,000 pot at stake for the person who
could get the lowest score among his group of friends. He won,
partly because he was the only one who played.

Scaramucci did eventually make it into Goldman Sachs, but with an
attitude like that, it wouldn't be long before he was fired. But
again, here's the part of the story that remains relevant: He was
back at the bank after two months.

"He is the way a lot of the guys brought up on Long Island in the
'80s are," said Gregg Hymowitz, a former colleague, and the
founder and managing member at Entrust Partners.

Entrust is a fund of funds business, like Scaramucci's SkyBridge.
Hymowitz also passed through the three most influential
institutions in Scaramucci's life around the same time — Long
Island (the South Shore for Hymowitz), Harvard Law, and Goldman
Sachs.

Long Island and its tough-guy, working-class culture sticks with
you, Hymowitz said.

"This is the way you're brought up when you're middle class from
Long Island. You go to Harvard, and those are still your roots.
It's part of your story. You go to Wall Street and there's a
mutual respect for people who pulled themselves up by their
bootstraps."

It was Scaramucci who helped Hymowitz get into Goldman, but after
an argument over a client, the two didn't speak for years.
Hymowitz isn't 100% clear on what happened, but he doesn't
remember ever getting that client. Back then, as now, The Mooch
could be charming and generous one moment, aggressive the next.

SALT

Many of you likely won't be familiar with how Wall Street does a
conference in Vegas, so allow me to describe it. The event,
called SALT, is a very Scaramucci creation: four days of parties
and discussions at the Bellagio Hotel. The Killers at
the Bellagio for the SALT conference in 2016.Josh Barro, Business Insider

Think pool time, political leaders, titans of international
finance, live music from anyone including Lenny Kravitz and
Maroon 5, parties, billionaires, millionaires, guys who run
money, guys who wish they ran money, guys making deals, guys
desperate to make deals, and lots of gambling.

SALT stands for the SkyBridge Alternatives Conference. SkyBridge
is Scaramucci's hedge fund of funds business — a firm he started
after stints at Lehman Brothers and Goldman, and after selling
his first hedge fund.

What SkyBridge does is pool investments from dentists and
doctors, and it channels them into hedge funds that those
not-wealthy-enough folks wouldn't be able to access themselves.

Of course, they have to know about it. So making SALT as
illustrious and newsworthy as possible was a focus of The Mooch's
old life.

In that life, Scaramucci was a married hedge-fund manager — with
a fifth child on the way — who spent his days traveling the world
talking about money — on CNBC, on Fox, on wherever and whatever
would have him. In that life he had a TV show called "Wall Street
Week"; he went to the world economic forum in Davos; he hung out
with Caitlyn Jenner; and he donated to Democrats and
Republicans.

This year, at the event in May, Scaramucci's future was almost as
uncertain as it is now, because, despite his efforts — including
agreeing to sell SkyBridge — he'd been unable to secure a job
inside the White House. He wasn't supposed to be there, a fact he
acknowledged and which was a cloud hanging over the entire
ceremony.

I'll give you an example.

So there he was interviewing William Ackman — a New York City
billionaire on a mea culpa tour after losing a face-melting
amount of money on a single bad bet in 2015 — when The Mooch
addressed the question on everyone's mind. They were talking
about Ackman's interest in investing in a certain fast-food
chain.

"That's going to be my next job," The Mooch joked. "Flipping
burgers at McDonald's."

The affable and self-deprecating tone was a signature of The
Mooch, but he was addressing a question that the investors and
fundraisers and journalists in attendance had been whispering
about since last year's bash, when he'd informally announced that
he would be shedding his old life and adopting a new one in the
service of Donald J. Trump.

He might have supporters, but Trump is not respected among this
kind of Wall Street crowd. It's almost in the same way that the
white shoes and blue blood of Wall Street wonder about the him
despite his financial success, except much, much worse. The idea
of doing business with the Trump family is mostly anathema to
them.

So the fact that Scaramucci — who spent his career trying
to gain credibility in an industry heavy with legacies and
snobbery — was attaching his brand to Trump's seemed like
lunacy.

But he had always been hungry for political clout, and he saw
Trump as a fast track for someone like him, someone with no
experience at all. He saw in Trump a way to enter the White
House.

I asked him what he was doing almost immediately after he
revealed that he would be joining team Trump through a series of
supportive tweets in May 2016. It was the week before his Vegas
party, and it was after he had supported Wisconsin Gov. Scott
Walker and Florida Gov. Jeb Bush in their presidential bids
earlier in the election.

Scaramucci explained that he had to go with Trump. On Bush's
campaign, he was on "the last bus" behind Jeb's guys, Jeb's
father's guys, and Jeb's brother's guys. On the Trump campaign,
he was confident he could have a seat at the table. He would be
in front. First bus.

Fame, American style

Anyone who knew The Mooch in those early days will tell you that
he has always loved politics.

"He really identifies with the people that Trump proclaims to
want to help. He's always been interested in politics and
government," Hymowitz said.

This even though most of
his career was spent in pursuit of money and a particular kind of
New York City fame. The money part is the simplest to explain.
Before forming SkyBridge, Scaramucci worked at Lehman Brothers
and Neuberger Berman as well as Goldman. He sold his first
financial-services firm, Oscar Capital Management, to Neuberger
Berman in 2001.

By 2008 he was rich — so rich that he was featured on a CNBC
special hosted by David Faber called "Untold Wealth."

"It makes me cringe when I say 'I am wealthy.' Then I think,
'What is the responsibility that comes with that?'" he said
during an interview from his Long Island home. Shortly after, the
camera cut to Scaramucci walking by a massive golden harp in his
sitting room. The special reported his net worth at about $85
million.

That's the money. The fame is harder to pinpoint if you're not
from this town, but they are obviously intertwined. Scaramucci
courted the press. Certainly not as aggressively as his recent
ex-boss, Trump,
who pretended to be his own publicist to leak stories. But
The Mooch was known, at least to the financial press, and the
city's two tabloids.

He was so known that when Bloomberg published the business
proposal for his opulent Midtown restaurant, The Hunt and Fish
Club, in 2013, the internet howled.
"New Worst Place In Manhattan Coming Soon" heralded Gawker.

"At long last, the provincial burg of Manhattan will soon be home
to an 'elite "clubhouse"' restaurant specifically for hedge fund
guys. It will be called 'the entire borough of Manhattan.' Haha,
a joke. No, it will be called hell," snarked Gawker writer
Hamilton Nolan.

And like so many times in life, Wall Street whispered that the
place with a "clubhouse feel" and attractive waitstaff (from the
marketing documents) would never open. People knew that
Scaramucci paid $100,000 for a SkyBridge cameo in "Wall Street
2." They knew his firm was small, and the way they saw it, he got
more press than he had investing prowess.

You see, Scaramucci has never "run money," as they say on the
Street. He's a marketing guy who funnels money into other
people's funds and collects a fee for doing so. It's a slight,
depending on the way you say it. Wall Street is a place that
prides itself on being able to "eat what you kill."

Put another way: There was, and still is, an element of Wall
Street that believed that The Mooch — with his CNBC appearances
and his photos with famous friends — was all talk. They thought
he lacked substance despite his success. SkyBridge, perhaps
somewhat like the Trump Organization, was a cult of personality
built on loyalty.

An orange sun

When Scaramucci is your surrogate, you can expect him to go out
and box for you if you let him.
As Politico reported, a few years ago, while interviewing PR
firms, Scaramucci told one candidate, “I need someone who’s
prepared to go to the mat and lie for me.”

And so once the men did join forces, dramatic things started
happening. People who had been friends of Scaramucci's for
decades started noticing a change. He was dazzled with Trump's
wealth and his branded private jet in a way that seemed almost
scripted out of a Hollywood movie.

Eventually, he would be hanging out at Trump Tower greeting
people as they came to meet the president-elect in late 2016. Fox
News' Charlie Gasparino called him "the millionaire doorman" on
the air.

Questions about The Mooch's intentions were rising even before
Gasparino's jab, and he started to turn away from his old life.
It started in the summer of 2016. Suddenly no one knew what was
happening with The Mooch's weekly business show on Fox, "Wall
Street Week" — a show he fought hard to produce and distribute.
There were rumors that he was angling for a post in the
administration. There were rumors that he would sell SkyBridge,
the firm he built with his hands.

Then the Scaramucci universe started whispering that he'd stopped
speaking to friends he'd had for years.

It was around this time that a man named Arthur Schwartz moved
into Scaramucci's inner circle. Schwartz is a publicist, and
though he's gone as far as saying last week that he doesn't work
for Scaramucci, he is known to journalists who've covered
SkyBridge and The Mooch as his gatekeeper and, at times, attack
dog.

By their nature, relationships like this are not totally clear.
But Arthur plays the kind of rough-and-tumble politics that
Scaramucci quickly became known for in his stint as
communications director.

Schwartz, usually behind the scenes, rose to national attention
with this tweet after when CNN's Jake Tapper demanded to know
whether Scaramucci was aware that his assumed publicist was
threatening the recently ousted White House chief of staff. It
spiraled quickly, with Schwartz threatening legal action before
backing down and deleting the tweets.

That said, HNA is, according to several reports, paying multiples
more for SkyBridge than the ailing firm is worth. Investors have
pulled
$1.6 billion from the firm over the past fiscal year and,
again, the market.

Scaramucci explained that HNA was also willing to do the deal
despite the fact that he was selling it to join the Trump
administration, and with that he prepared for Washington. But a
week after the inauguration, post after post was filled, and The
Mooch's name was never called.

There was a stint when he went to the White House and tried to
settle in. But according to reports, powerful elements (Steve
Bannon and Reince Priebus) were angling to keep the wise-talking
Long Islander doing a deal with the Chinese away from Trump.

Lewandowski
says hello to reporters as he and Gorka, Manigault, and
Scaramucci accompany Trump for an event celebrating veterans at
AMVETS Post 44 in Struthers, Ohio.Thomson Reuters

Calling around

Pretty much all of Wall Street was shocked when The Mooch became
White House communications director at the end of July. He looked
and sounded familiar (he said "arbitrage spread" on TV), but he
had a particular Trumpian glow about him.

He had won. And in that brief period, one longtime friend
described The Mooch's victory like this, referring to his
critics: "They think they're fencing, and he knows it's a knife
fight."

But of course, the same person had a word of caution.

"I think anybody that's his friend has to worry about the Icarus
complex — he can fly too close to the sun."

He did. When Scaramucci started on a Friday, he was giving
charming, if not sycophantic, press conferences. Just over a week
later, he was being escorted out of the White House. In the time
between, in appearance after appearance, he had professed his
undying loyalty to the president while stirring up new drama for
the White House.

And: "I'm not Steve Bannon, I'm not trying to suck my own c---,"
he said, speaking of Trump's chief strategist. "I'm not trying to
build my own brand off the f------ strength of the President. I'm
here to serve the country."

Scaramucci also threatened to fire the entire White House staff,
which made people in his office uncomfortable, to say the least.
America was not charmed. Even Fox News' Laura Ingraham chided The
Mooch. The story entered the news cycle and wouldn't leave. The
president had the spotlight taken from him.

Scaramucci
at the daily White House press briefing at the White House, July
21, 2017, in Washington, DC.Chip
Somodevilla/Getty Images

Now it's unclear to anyone who has dealt with The Mooch why this
happened. He knows how to deal with the press; he's been courting
it for years. The Mooch we know on Wall Street doesn't drink or
do drugs either.

Ex-SkyBridge employees will tell you that sometimes he feigned
drinking at parties. Fake shots. The whole nine.

It could be, though, that he caught Trump disease. It happens if
you get too deep in that family's orbit, it seems. Someone new
starts hanging around Donald, and they think they can start
acting like him. They become too familiar with power. They think
they can get away with what he gets away with. But that's
obviously not the case.

By the time Scaramucci was fired from the White House, the same
elements that had brought him in (Ivanka and Jared, according to
reports) were ushering him out. Those close to him say The
Mooch's ambition was to become White House chief of staff once
Priebus was out of the picture, but that job was given to Gen.
John Kelly instead.

During all this drama, it leaked that his wife, Deidre, was
divorcing him. He had been in West Virginia with Trump instead of
in New York City for the birth of his child, just days after his
first press conference. The tabloids said that she was sick of
Trump.

To anyone who knows The Mooch, this is the weirdest part of the
whole story. Not being around for the birth of his kid is just
not like him. It is not like him to see his family, in this case
his wife, talked about negatively in
Page Six, New York City's most salacious social record,
either.

One longtime friend and former business associate was offended,
and told us Deidre was "smart, generous," and, in their view, "a
caring mother to their son Nicholas."

Otherwise, old friends and employees say that everything else
he's done — the loud talking, the blind loyalty — coincides with
the most power-hungry and insecure parts of his personality.

"He always said he was focused on building SkyBridge, making the
business the best it could be," said another person who's known
him personally and professionally for years. "Many of his closest
advisers challenged him on his motivations for that. But he
doesn't realize how much he's fueled by the attention so he
couldn't admit it ... to the point where he's sacrificed
everything and seemingly almost everyone for it."